Thumper by Marie James

Chapter 35

Cara

I was fully engaged in the conversation we were having, and then Javier walked into the room. Now the talk around me is no more than chatter and background noise.

He’s holding the bottle of water one of the guys handed him, and I’m amazed with how handsome he is. His swollen eye is almost completely open now, and despite the discoloration of the multiple bruises on his face, I know that they’re healing. He’s a strong man both physically and mentally. I know I would’ve checked out completely if I had gone through what he did.

A light chuckle draws my attention away from him, and I blush when I find Delilah looking at me and then across the room where my attention was focused. She gives me a soft, knowing smile, but I don’t say anything to confirm or deny her suspicions.

“You know,” Gigi says as she leans forward. “Rumor is he never touched any of the girls when they had parties over here.”

“Parties?” I ask.

“Orgies,” Gigi clarifies.

I nearly choke on my own tongue. “What?”

“Gigi, stop,” Delilah says.

“What? It’s true.”

“She doesn’t want to hear about any of that.” Delilah pats my hand as if I need protecting.

I know she isn’t trying to be condescending, but this is what I hate about everyone knowing my past. I don’t want the conversations to change when I walk into a room. I don’t want people to shield me from anything.

Instead of explaining all of this, I just turn my attention back to Gigi. “You go to the orgies?”

A wide smile spreads across her face. “Jameson would kill any of the men here if they looked at me, but we have gone to a club in Denver, and people have watched us.”

“W-watched?”

“Having sex,” Gigi confirms, but then she leans back against the sofa. “We haven’t been in a while. I think I’m going to ask for a trip for my birthday.”

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Izzy says as she stands. “The last thing I want to listen to are details about my dad’s sex life.”

Several women chuckle as Izzy walks away with an overexaggerated chuckle.

“What are we talking about?” Sophia, Dominic’s youngest daughter, says as she sits down. Her belly is almost as rounded as Delilah’s is, and I have to wonder if drinking the water around here is safe.

You would actually have to have sex for that to be an issue,my head reminds me.

“The sex club in Denver,” Ivy mutters. “As always.”

“Having a healthy sex life isn’t something we should be ashamed of talking about,” Sophia says with a glint of mischief in her eyes.

She looks like the type of girl I would’ve gravitated to right after leaving Knight Salvation when I wanted to be wild, a huge middle finger to all the things those assholes tried to drill into my head.

“Tell that to Izzy,” Delilah mumbles.

“Actually, I was telling Cara about how Thumper never touched the girls at the parties here. I mean, I overheard once that he would stroke himself while watching, but he never got involved.”

“Gigi,” Ivy warns.

“No, it’s fine,” I say. “Don’t change the subject on my account.”

“She always talks about sex,” Sophia explains. “Like all the time.”

Gigi shrugs. I look across the room at Jameson as he smiles at his little girl while holding his son in his arms. The toddler looks exhausted but completely at home in his dad’s arms. I look further, my eyes going back to Javier, and I can tell he’s quickly losing steam. The longer I watch him, the more I realize that he’s not going to cut short his conversations with the various guys that stop by to chat unless he’s forced to. He’s gone from standing upright to leaning against the wall, and now I can see his eyes are darting around for a chair. The man is stubborn.

“Excuse me,” I tell the girls as I stand and cross the room.

“Are you going to force me to play mean nurse?” I ask as I approach him.

“I’m sure he’d love that,” Apollo teases as he walks away with a chuckle.

“Ignore him,” Javier says.

I hold my hand out to him, and he takes it immediately. I’m staring down at the way his thumb is tracing circles over the back so long it takes me a minute to realize a hush has settled over the group.

I look over my shoulder, finding more than a couple of the people watching us.

“You’re absolutely gorgeous,” he says in a tone that’s too low for anyone else to hear.

“The pain you’re in must be making you loopy.”

I look up from our hands to give him a teasing smile, but the second my face is angled up, his lips are on mine. It’s not a hurried kiss or one filled with obscene passion. It’s soft yet claiming.

I grin against his lips before I can stop myself.

“I don’t want any of the single guys thinking you’re fair game,” he whispers against my lips.

“Come on,” I say, urging him with a tug of my hand to head back down the hallway. “I know you’re tired, and for the record, not one of the guys here has so much as looked at me twice or made a suggestive remark.”

“And another one bites the dust,” someone says behind us as we walk away.

“What were you ladies over there talking about?” he asks as we step into the room, wincing in pain as he tries to pull his button-down shirt off.

I reach to help him but don’t offer up any information. Maybe he didn’t touch the women at the parties Gigi mentioned because he wouldn’t be able to control himself. Maybe the men around here wouldn’t appreciate the way he likes to take women.

I pull his shirt down his arms, making sure the fabric doesn’t catch on any of his stitches and take a step back.

“They told me that you never touched any of the women at the orgies you guys have.”

I expect him to get defensive or lie, but he slowly turns around to face me. I busy myself folding his shirt because I need to focus on something besides how he may be looking at me right now.

“I was working when I was here. It wouldn’t have been right.”

I want to open my mouth to remind him he was working when he had sex twice with Lauren, but I just don’t have the courage. Even in my head that sounds petty and chocked-full of jealousy. Besides, that was a different job than Cerberus, so maybe the rules are different. God, what happens when he takes another, and he’s forced to do the same thing?

And that makes me question why I’m even concerned. Javier isn’t mine. We aren’t a thing. We can’t ever be anything.

“You had sex with Lauren,” bubbles out of my mouth, shocking me that I couldn’t just let it go.

“I’m not trying to make excuses, but if I hadn’t, then Angel and I would’ve been dead on the spot, and you and the other women would’ve been sold to the next highest bidder.”

“And what would you have done if Lauren wasn’t there? If you didn’t get lucky that another agent, one you had a previous sexual relationship with was there?”

He sits down on the edge of the bed, his eyes full of anguish, and I have my answer.

“That’s an impossible situation.”

“What would you have done?” I ask again, my throat threatening to seize.

“I would’ve done the same thing.” He sounds broken when he answers.

When he reaches for me, I take another step back.

“I won’t lie to you to make myself look good. I’m not happy with the things I’ve done. It eats me from the inside out. I never claimed not to be a monster, and I know it’s little penitence that I was FBI when all of it was happening.”

“I can appreciate your honesty, but regardless of this chemistry between us, we can never happen.”

“I understand. I know it would be too much for any woman to deal with.”

“I probably shouldn’t, but I understand why you did what you did. I guess we can both be grateful you didn’t have to violate someone else. That would be horrible, and I don’t want that for you, but I watched some of that video of you with Lauren, and that type of sex… I’ll never be into that. I don’t fantasize about someone talking to me that way or hurting me. I just can’t see myself—”

“Hold on,” he says, making a timeout sign with his hands. “That kind of sex?”

“Violent and abusive, degrading.”

His laugh is like a slap in the face, and I take another step back. “Wait, no. I’m not laughing at you. Lauren and I didn’t work out because that’s not who I am either. She craves that sort of thing, not me. Yeah, I went along with it for a while, but I can’t imagine any horny guy right out of college would’ve turned her down. And just for full disclosure, the sex outside that first night was necessary for everyone’s safety. The sex in the room later was to make sure no one questioned me. I had intended to talk to her, but once I got in there, I realized I hadn’t turned the audio off, so the conversation we needed to have didn’t happen until that following day in a room without audio or video.”

He stands from the bed, and I stand my ground. I’m not afraid of him. If anything, I’m scared of how my body and mind react to him.

“I don’t get pleasure from a woman crying out in pain. I prefer soft moans and gasps of pleasure.”

“Really?” My mind is getting whiplash from going zero to sixty before slamming on the brakes and making a U-turn in the opposite direction.

“Really.” He draws even closer, his hands going to my hips.

All arguments fall from my tongue as he lifts my chin to look into his dark eyes.

“I’m not going to kink shame anyone. Safe, sane, and consensual is how it should always be, but the only pain I’m into is that little nibble on the inside of a silky thigh, or maybe a teasing bite to a perky nipple.”

“Nibbling?” I ask, my throat suddenly dry.

He nods. “You want me to show you?”